stitution of the thirteen
original States of the American Union and of the other States which
they have admitted into their Union, and of no other States or
communities; and that therefore it does not extend of its own force
outside the American Union in any constitutional or legal sense, but
only in a metaphorical sense--this being as I understand it, the
meaning of the Court when they hold, as they do, that, though the
"Territory clause" is of present and universal significance as
respects all the regions annexed to the Union, yet, with this
exception, only "the applicable provisions of the Constitution" or
"the fundamental principles formulated in the Constitution" are in
force in the annexed regions. "Extensions," so-called, of the
Constitution by Act of Congress, are of course mere Acts of Congress,
and whether such metaphorical "extensions" are permanent will depend
upon the terms and conditions of the "extension."

But though I shall not base myself on the Constitution of the United
States, I shall nevertheless base myself on a great American Document,
which preceded the Constitution as a statement of American principles,
and which is so far from being inconsistent with it that the
Democratic party, in its platform of 1900, called it "the Spirit of
the Constitution"--I refer to the Declaration of Independence. It is
the American principles set forth in that document which I shall try
to discover. If I shall be adjudged to have rightly interpreted that
instrument, it will follow that we ought to substitute, in our
political and legal language, for the term "colony," the term "free
state," for "dependence," "just connection," and for "empire,"
"union." In making such substitution, however, it will be necessary to
give to the terms "free state" and "union," a scientific meaning which
will differ from that which they now have in the popular mind, but
which will, I believe, be the same as was given to these terms by the
Revolutionary statesmen.

I shall not allow myself to be embarrassed by the fact that in my
first published writing I used the terms "colony," "dependence" and
"empire;" for at the same time that I used these terms, I based myself
on principles which were those of free statehood, just connection and
union, to which I adhere to this day.

Taking the Declaration of Independence, therefore, as the exposition
of the fundamental principles on which all American political theory
is based, and to which al